COVID-19 pandemic and social work responses in Chinese societies

The COVID-19 pandemic has imposed a devastating impact on a global scale. Its impact has been not only on the health of citizens but also on different aspects of our living. In Hong Kong, we could see lessons were conducted over Zoom, New Year greetings were sent via WhatsApp and Wechat, and children had their lessons in one corner of the apartment while parents needed to work from home in another corner. In social work settings, these turbulences have affected our everyday lives, our service users, and our frontline practices. The Chinese word for “crisis” consists of two Chinese characters, one signifies “danger”, and the other signifies “opportunity”. In Chinese societies, we also have social work practitioners seeing this crisis as an opportunity for exploring new strategies and social changes. It cannot be denied that the pandemic has brought us disruption, uncertainty and hardships, especially impact on the marginalised groups. However, it has also generated our creativity, stimulated our imagination and enhanced our resilience. Social Work, as a helping profession in Western societies, has a long history of dealing with disaster and natural hazard. It has been well recorded that social work is effective in serving the vulnerable population in disaster-affected communities in terms of traumatic stress management, resources delivery, service planning, community rebuilding and policy advocacy (Galambos 2005; Mitchell 1983; van den Eynde and Veno 1999; Zakours 1996; Banerjee and Gillespie 1994; Dodds and Nuehring 1996; Pyles 2007). As Yanay and Benjamin (2005, 263 and 271) rightly concluded, responding to disasters is “part of social work practice and profession” and “social workers are the professionals best prepared to deal with complex situations resulting from an emergency”. Even in the Chinese mainland, social work as a young profession has accumulated certain experience in disaster intervention and management since Wenchuan earthquake on 12 May 2008 (e.g. Sim 2009; Pei, Zhang, and Ku 2009; Ting and Chen 2012; Ku and Ma 2015; Ku and Dominelli 2018). When the COVID-19 pandemic broke out at the end of 2019, the social work profession in Chinese societies has been more ready for working with the pandemic-affected communities and population and has created different strategies to overcome the negative impact of the pandemic. This special issue is to document the works of social work teaching and practice in Chinese societies in responding to pandemic lockdown. This special issue begins with Ma’s and Lyu’s article that discusses the role of social work based on the China national report on the COVID-19 pandemic. They reviewed the overall situation of the COVID-19 pandemic in Mainland China, studied the measures and regulations implemented by the state and discussed the roles of social workers. The findings showed that innovative online services helped practitioners continue their services and helped educators continue their teaching. CHINA JOURNAL OF SOCIAL WORK 2021, VOL. 14, NO. 2, 77–79 https://doi.org/10.1080/17525098.2021.1950756